Scotland is getting it wrong. This is the bold assertion of Blossom: What Scotland Needs to Flourish, a passionate polemic on Scottish culture, society and politics (including key issues like land reform) by award-winning journalist Lesley Riddoch.

Festival of Spirituality and Peace in Edinburgh (3-27 August 2012) is an Interfaith and intercultural event; there are Jewish, Islamic, Christian and Daoist events, for example, as well as artists from every contintent but Antarctica, reports Katie MacFadyen. But what is the relationship between 'interfaith' and 'no faith'? Where do Secular Humanists fall in this atmosphere of inclusivity?

Classifying communities and their practices and values as ‘religious’ often has the effect of marginalising them from the mainstream of public debates on justice and the proper ends of the good life, says scholar Timothy Fitzgerald. Such classification has the effect of clothing secular reason with the misleading aura of neutral objectivity, he suggests.

A major conference on race, religion, secularity and public policy is taking place at the University of East London on Thursday 27 January 2011, organised by the Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) and the Runnymede Trust. Ekklesia is among the presenting agencies.